Poscol

Updated 5:40 pm, Thursday, October 29, 2015

Photo: Johnny Hanson :, Chronicle

Image 1of/3

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 3

Vinoteca Poscol's small, modular menu is a great way to sample Italian fare, including salumi with house-made salumi testa, veal lingua, pork cheek sausage and porchetta as well as various other meats including prosciutto, spicy coppa and Tuscan garlic salame. less

Vinoteca Poscol's small, modular menu is a great way to sample Italian fare, including salumi with house-made salumi testa, veal lingua, pork cheek sausage and porchetta as well as various other meats including ... more

Photo: Johnny Hanson :, Chronicle

Image 2 of 3

The panini with prosciutto, mozzarella and arugula at Poscol is a good choice when diners want to sample Italian cheeses.

The panini with prosciutto, mozzarella and arugula at Poscol is a good choice when diners want to sample Italian cheeses.

Photo: Johnny Hanson :, Chronicle

Image 3 of 3

Cannelloni with broccoletti at Vinoteca Poscol.

Cannelloni with broccoletti at Vinoteca Poscol.

Photo: Johnny Hanson :, Chronicle

Poscol

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

The first order of business at Poscol is to check the blackboard at the far end of the low-slung dining room, with its eight-seater bar and tiny tables. That's where the daily inspirations of chef Marco Wiles and company appear, bringing life and surprise to the modular menu of Italian small plates.

Maybe it will be fresh whole sardines, cloven into two fillets — still attached by the tail — and tactfully pan fried to bronze. Just a squeeze of lemon and they practically leap from the piece of brown paper they rest on, proudly oceanic. A crest of arugula with halved red grapes furls across the plate, seasoned with just the right touch of sea salt, pepper and olive oil. It's a brilliant match, deftly underplayed.

Perhaps there will be a crumbly-coarse terrine of Texas pheasant waiting in the wings, the pale house-made slices threaded with a film of aromatic black truffle: the real thing, not the ham-fisted, fakey truffle oil that is everywhere these days. Eaten with a hunk of coarse grilled bread and a crisp, unsung Sicilian white wine (one of the night's two wine specials), the terrine is the kind of thing that disappears quickly.

So is another special, twin grilled house-made sausages of Texas antelope flavored with black currant and a hot-red-chile undertone of Moroccan harissa. It's one of the cured meats — salumi in Italian — that have top billing on the menu here.

Vinoteca Poscol

2 stars

608 Westheimer 713-529-2797

Hours: 5 p.m.-midnight, Tuesdays-Saturdays; 5-10 p.m.Sundays

Credit cards: All major

Noise level: Moderate

Reservations: First come, first served

Some of the salumi here are the same good-quality commercial varieties served down the street at Wiles' pizzeria, Dolce Vita: sliced paper thin and fanned on a wooden serving paddle, gorgeous and gleaming. I'm fond of the slick fennel salami with its round dots of fat and of the tight, chewy shards of serrano ham with their muskiness and pop of salt.

But it's the salumi made in house that draw me back. Think you're afraid of veal tongue or head cheese? Try the thin, mild sheets of tongue with their faint gelatinous crunch, baptized in olive oil with crescents of pickled red onion for kick. Or the testa, a shiny mosaic of tender cheek meat held together by savory gelatin, as delicate — even elegant — as you please.

If you are wondering how these delicacies figure into a meal plan, don't. Poscol is best experienced as a relaxed, informal graze through the menu, with a little of this, a little of that, all chased with a lively and revolving array of Italian wines geared to moving you beyond the safe orbit of Pinot Grigio and Chianti. It is less a conventional restaurant than a wine bar with really good food.

I like to mix and match the salumi with Wiles' finely julienned celery-root salad, laced with batons of tart apple and a snowfall of freshly grated horseradish. It's a testament to the chef's way with vegetables, as is a cupful of gently braised cardoons, the stalk of a Mediterranean thistle, its pale green hue as delicate as its tinge of artichoke flavor.

When I'm in the mood for something more substantial, I pick the wonderful risotto dotted with butternut squash and crisped chicken liver or the small casserole of baked cannelloni filled with broccoli rabe softened with a little bechamel and glazed with a bright tomato sauce.

Another of the small slate of baked pastas — the spaghetti tossed with bechamel and salty bits of prosciutto — suits when I'm in the mood to sample the offbeat Italian white wines that are strength of this list. You can taste before you commit to a 3-ounce or larger glass (always a plus).

The day's choices might run to a rich gold Fiano di Avellino from Gaetano do Torino, a steal at $6 a glass; a spicy Falanghina from Villa Matilda; or a subtly floral Ronca di Tera Custoza blend of Trebbiano, Garganega and Tocai Friuliano grapes.

If I only want a quick bite, I might opt for a simple bruschetta of fava bean and green peas, pureed and spread on a palm-sized round of grilled bread, the kind of thing you might find on a rustic Italian table (preferably outdoors and under a tree). Or perhaps a little baked casserole of cod spread, or bacala, tasting nicely of ocean salt, to go with hunks of grilled bread.

One night when I was ravenous, the blackboard specials included tenderly roasted suckling pig served forth under a sheath of well-crisped and rendered pig skin. It broke with such a big, sharp crack when I bit into it that I would have laughed out loud — except that my mouth was full. I went home with pig cracklings still stuck in my teeth, a happier circumstance than you might think.

Sometimes I'm in the mood to eat a bit of Italian cheese here, or my favorite panini of soft, shreddy pot roast gigged with sharp cabbage relish, a sort of sublime baby food. If I crave something sweet, there are dried figs soaked in red wine on a creamy mesa of mascarpone; or Wiles' brilliant zeppole, a species of Italian doughnut hole fried so beautifully that the center of each small orb has a custard-like softness. They are brilliant.

At such moments, I puzzle over the carping I hear about Poscol: that it's not really the salumeria (or cured-meats shop) it's billed as; that you can't get a real meal there; that the bill is less casual than the atmosphere. That's all poppycock, as far as I'm concerned.

Poscol is such a useful restaurant for me — its modest portions so suited to the kind of informal dining I prefer when I'm not on duty as a critic — that I am consistently delighted with it. I can point to only two dishes out of at least a score that left me cold, and one of them — a bland and tomato-less panzanella salad — is no longer on the menu. The other, a tangle of fried spaghetti, does have its charms as a novelty act.

The only thing I'd change about Poscol is its unfortunate location next to a dry-cleaning shop. Often the place is filled with a harsh chemical aroma that can get in the way of wine and food. In my experience, the smell abates within five minutes or so, usually. Still, in my dreams, Marco Wiles finds enough success here that he can buy the cleaners out.